It's the final countdown

After being on the road for 62 days, visiting 6 city's in 4 countries it's now time to travel back home to Europe and Stockholm.

Top 4 things we will miss when back in Stockholm (in no particular order)

• Restaurant prices - there is no problem going from starving to full for 8 SEK (3 PLN).
• Laundry service - so cheap you almost feel ashamed when paying.
• Service minded and genuinely nice Malaysian people.
• Freshly squeezed orange juice - from 5 SEK (2 PLN) a glass.

Top 4 things we now love about Sweden (in no particular order)

• Drinkable tap water.
• Right-side traffic without the jams.
• Fast Internet connection.
• Tunnbrödrulle

Top 4 things we won't miss about Malaysia (in no particular order)

• Being followed around in stores by sales clerks
• The traffic jams
• The lizards
• The Absolute Music 5 CD (or whatever was hot 25 years ago) that all stores insists on repeating over and over again.
  

Most useless thing we packed
Socks. Last time we wore socks it was still January.

Best restaurant we found in Malaysia
La Sal at Pantai Cenang, Langkawi. We have been there 3 times and between the two of us we must have tried half of the dishes on the menu. So it feels safe to say that you can't go wrong at this place. Don't miss out on the drinks either!

Beer and Loafing in Langkawi

We found yet another great restaurant in the 11th hour. It's called The Loaf and you will find it in the picturesque Telaga Harbour. The restaurant overlooks the beautiful marina with the Andaman Sea on one side and Mount Mat Cincang proudly towering 700 meters behind.

No stay in Langkawi should be considered complete without at least one visit to The Loaf. But do yourself a favor and visit the place twice because they serve both a delicious dinner and a great steady breakfast. We've been there two times now and we do not regret it. The Loaf gives our other favorite restaurant here in Langkawi a run for the money, we are not even sure which one's our fav anymore.

La Sal vs. The Loaf

Round 1: The view
Tough one, both have beautiful view, at The Loaf you can see the mountains and the marina, while at La Sal you can admire the beach and the stunning sunset.

Winner: La Sal

Round 2: Food
At La Sal the entire dinner is top notch. The Loaf serves fantastic starters and main courses, however the Tiramisu failed to impress us.

Winner: La Sal

Round 3: Money, money, money...
Knockout victory by The Loaf, ding, ding, ding!

Dinner Friday evening @ The Loaf.

















Breakfast Saturday morning @ The Loaf.

Don't go chasing waterfalls...

"...Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to..."

Remember that song by TLC? We should have taken their advice. But we wanted to see the waterfall that was described in the guide book as a geological marvel, so we drove to Telaga Tujuh which is about as far away as you can drive on this island. Once there we found out that it's dry season (no shit Sherlock!) so the only geological marvel left to see was dust and dry mud. Luckily for us we were at least told before we attempted to climb the umpteen steps. Plus we got to see a really cute monkey so the trip wasn't a complete waste.

We had to think fast and come up with a new plan, but if there's one thing we've learned on this trip it's that plan B can sometimes outshine plan A, and this proved to be true again.

With nothing to loose really we decided to stop at the Perdana Quay in Telaga Harbour. Our host Rob had described it as a nice place with a Mediterranean flavor. Usually we try to keep it local when we are abroad, a "when in Rome..." mindset you could say. But we've been in Malaysia for so long now that European food sounded very tempting, and that's how we ended up at a Spanish tapas joint.

The harbor was dominated by a gigantic super yacht named Moecca Douglas. It was the biggest god damn boat we've ever seen and the closest we've ever gotten to filthy rich people. We were so curious about the boats owner that we almost forgot to eat our tapas. Tom Cruise? Kylie Minogue? Nicole Kidman? We hopped to get a small glance of someone famous but all we saw was the seven man strong cleaning team, polishing their asses off. Some of us (no names mentioned) were even considering to go through the boats garbage that was bagged on the dock cause apparently "that's were you find information". While "the other some of us" went on a spy mission with our Nikon D90 and made friends with an Australian sailer. He didn't reveal anything but it's always nice to talk to people from Australia. Overall the day turned out really great and we didn't miss the waterfalls much, we just wish we would have spotted the rich bastard but he stayed incognito.

One Mai Tai too many

Last night around sunset we decided to go to Charlie's Place down by the Royal Yacht Club. We've been there before and even though it may not be the most exciting place in Malaysia it's decent enough to deserve another visit. Not everyday can be a fantastic adventure worth writing home about, right?

Luckily for us the night would turn out so much better then expected. Right after setting foot at the Yacht Club we ran into Eva the captain from Damai Indah who we've been out cruising the Andaman sea with twice now. It was so great seeing her again, she must be the nicest person this side of the equator. Eva and her friend Uli joined our table and we all had a great time. Beata had perhaps one Mai Tai too many, but she had no choice! She had to take one for the team so to speak, because I was driving and couldn't have as many Cuba Libre as I normally want and we couldn't let Eva drink all by herself, could we?

Eva took care of the bill, and this is only days after she treated us to a luxurious cruise, can you believe that? She's just too good to be true! What have we ever done for her, nothing really. Except writing a very positive review of her cruise on Tripadvisor, but she already have plenty of those.

Today is the day after and now we're (read Beata) paying the price for having such a great time yesterday, but it was definitely worth it.

Dinner conversation

Today we met three kind souls (one very sleepy one). We were relaxing with a Tiger beer and some orange juice, just waiting for our take away dinner. While we're admiring the cute baby you see in the picture the man with white mustache declared with great pride in his voice that "I'm sleeping with her grandmother". Now that's what we call an ice-breaker.





Always stay tuned


Our local fruit dealer, prices are bananas!

Living on the edge

Life as a parent consists of many routines and yesterday we decided that we were ready for a real adrenaline kick - cable car ride.

The cable car ride is amazing. You get a spectacular view of the rainforest and an awesome panorama of the Andaman Sea. There are two stations on the way up but we decided to go for the scary top one without wasting our time on the "chicken's stop".







On the top station 708m above sea-level you get a 360-degree panoramic view of the Langkawi islands, Kedah and Southern Thailand. Once we took our photos we continued to the Sky bridge which is an architectural wonder. The bridge is 125 m long and it is a link between the top station and Machincang mountain range. The valley under the bridge is breathtaking but kind of scary. We felt a bit shaky walking on the bridge with Nelly, she on the other hand was very cool. At times it felt like she was a bigger attraction that the bridge itself - let's just say that many photos of our daughter were taken and many hands were shaken.















On our way down while Martin was admiring the solid construction of the cable car, I happened to mention that according to me the scary part is the fact that there is one only cable which keeps the gondolas up and no second security cable!
He looked at me, holding our daughter a bit tighter and said: Thanks for sharing!



To keep the story short we made it back to solid ground again and went for a snack. Four huge glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice plus Nasi Goreng for two (which is chicken with fried rice) costed us 26 Ringgit. That's about 17 PLN or 50 SEK. We've now been here for so long that it acctualy felt a little too expensive.

Check out our daughter entertaining herself and everyone else around while we were eating.

Three reasons to celebrate

Today's Valentines day and it's also exactly one year since I went down on my knee and proposed to the love of my life Beata. It goes without saying it calls for some kind of celebration. Today's also Chinese New Year which is a pretty big thing over here. Most shops are closed and restaurant tables are booked. Luckily for us we had already reserved a table at the Phan Thai Restaurant not far from Pantai Kok on Langkawis west side (we live on the east).

We started with drinks, my memory is a little fuzzy right now I must admit, I vaguely recall a Cuba Libre, a Tequila Sunrise, and I think we ordered a Singapore Sling as well. Food was good but not great, I guess what you really pay for at a place like this is the view, and that's priceless!

BBQ very nice!

Today we called our baby-sitter again. We haven't used her service since we got married even though baby-sitting is THE greatest invention since sliced bread. Knowing that Nelly was in safe hands we jumped in our car and drove west to Pantai Cenang. After a slow hand in hand stroll along the waterfront we found a nice place called La Sal where we ate the best god damn appetizer since we arrived to Malaysia: kataifi prawns.



The sunset played the role of dinner entertainment, the atmosphere was really quiet just what we were looking for.









In the water right in front of the restaurant they had an under water fence that blocked... well naturally we thought it was there to block sharks. But when I asked the waiter if they had problems with sharks he answered "No problem, shark barbecue very nice". So there you go, maybe we should stop worrying about sharks, the locals sure did long time ago.

Oh, and the fence was there to keep Jet-Skis away :-)

After dinner we slow danced on the beach to "Just the two of us" by Grover Washington Jr.

Meanwhile back in the apartment Nelly was playing hide-n-seek with the baby-sitter.